7 ms·

Web Design Museum

228 points by helloplanets 2y ago

romanhn 2y ago
The evolution of the McDonalds website is a great example of playful and whimsical 90s design aesthetic gradually replaced to become the blandness that it is today.
- jaredhallen 2y ago
  In that particular example, and probably many others, I think the progression corresponded to changes in the business itself. McDonald's rebranded, expanding their target demographic beyond kids specifically, and I feel like they lost all their character in the process.
Aldipower 2y ago
Can't help, those old sites looking very colorful and characterful. Feels personal. Very nice memories.
eterevsky 2y ago
I'm still missing the old Google logo with an elegant serif font.
chris-vecchio 2y ago
I'm grateful to Web Design Museum for keeping the history of web design alive. I love waking up and seeing something new from days gone by that rekindles that spark.
- webdesignmuseum 2y ago
  Thanks for the support. It helps us make the Museum better.
lagniappe 2y ago
My favorite artist at the time was Mike Young https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/designgraphik-2001 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/designgraphik-2001 Serving 3 is in there, too bad serving phour doesnt seem to be.
web64 2y ago
It's cool to see the website[1] of the startup/dotCom I worked at in the early 2000s captured there! The website won the navigation award at Macromedia's fashforward event, and I still think holds up quite well even over 20 years later. The zoom navigation was quite interesting and worked well on mobile devices like the HP iPAQ PDAs we tested it on. [1] https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/relevare-2002 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/relevare-2002
neya 2y ago
I still to date prefer the older, full-of-character designs than the modern soulless minimalist designs. We also didn't have to worry about annoying cookie consent popups, "subscribe now!" splash screen popups and the general fear of clicking any link that opens a new window randomly to some walled garden.
Bjorkbat 2y ago
Related https://thehistoryofweb.design/ https://thehistoryofweb.design/ The book is an interesting read. The death of Flash feels like the start of a dark age for web design when you compare what came before with what came now. Granted, this may be less due to the death of Flash and more due to marketers and UX professionals trying to simplify the journey from visit to purchase.
- Aldipower 2y ago
  I was an "ActionScript 3" developer around 2010s targeting browser, but also offline "Rich Internet Applications". Together with our designers, whom worked in Adobe Flash, we had a tremendous throughput of production ready applications. Today I program React.js/TypeScript applications. What a slow turtled pace of getting things done. :( And of course very very expensive to develop. And a lot of things aren't even possible anymore. Of course, the Flash platform had it's downsides too, but in terms of throughput and productivity, this was very very great.
- reaperducer 2y ago
  The death of Flash feels like the start of a dark age for web design when you compare what came before with what came now. People romanticize Flash these days. Especially people who weren't old enough to struggle with it. Used improperly – as it very often was – Flash was a resource hog far beyond even the craziest of today's web sites. In many circumstances it could actually crash your computer. Not just the browser, but the entire machine. Sure, the operating system and the browser were complicit, but I'm not going to blame a broken window for not being bulletproof. Plus, it seemed like there was forever update after update after update every time you tried to view a fancy web site. Updating plugins isn't a big deal today. It was a big deal when it happened over a 56k dialup connection. Can you imagine someone today thinking, "Oh, this looks like an interesting web site. I'd better close every other window and program on my computer, so it doesn't crash." It's unthinkable. I hate that today's web sites are all boring and desaturated and flat. But I love that I can browse the web and keep a dozen other programs open and doing work at the same time. Watching all of the new things people are doing with canvas and WebGPU and whatnot makes me think we're heading back to the bad old days of Flash. It seems like an arms race between people who want to turn a browser into an operating system, and browser makers trying to keep everything tidy.
raytopia 2y ago
Mid 90s sites have a nice look to them. Honestly in some ways they're easier to read then a lot of websites of today. Is there a reason why designers moved away from that - I'm not sure what to call it - magazine look?
- johnisgood 2y ago
  Funny how some websites used to have their neat logo on the website, and now it is the name only.
- reaperducer 2y ago
  Is there a reason why designers moved away from that - I'm not sure what to call it - magazine look? A lot of it is monkey-see-monkey-do. And realted, the widespread use of common frameworks instead of people actually understanding how web sites work and doing their own programming. I build a web site for a hospital that was fast and responsive and accessible. A manager complained that it didn't look like a "real" web site because the pages loaded instantly. She wanted me to put in a mechanism so that every time someone clicked on a link a loading spinner would appear for a few seconds before the next page loaded. Because that's what "real" web sites do.
  - cyph3rpvnk 2y ago
    That's atrocious. I think a big part of it is the merging of websites (purely informational) and web applications (programs with IO). The lines have blurred over the years.
  - perardi 2y ago
    Wow, I’ve never had someone ask me to purposefully build in latency. That’s nuts. Maybe she was responding to how jarring page transitions can be. I’ve gotten some good use out of the View Transitions API in a product I’m building. (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/view-transitions https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/view-transiti...) It’s a server-side rendered multi-page app, and throwing in just a bit of view transition CSS to get a nice fade effect when you go to a different page does feel nice.
johnisgood 2y ago
Oh my, this is amazing. Nostalgia lane!
chasing 2y ago
https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/exhibitions/y2k-aesthetic-in-web-design https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/exhibitions/y2k-aesthetic-in... Remember when tech was optimistic?
eamonobr 2y ago
I feel like one could turn this into a traveling, interactive, VR/AR type of experience. Enter a room with old sites projected onto the walls. Get hit over the head with fun 90s/00s nostalgia, showcase notable tech from the era, etc.
degenerate 2y ago
YouTube design changed almost every year until 2020! Wild.
tracker1 2y ago
Memberberries.... I member...
bbor 2y ago
Amazing site, thanks so much for sharing! If you know enough to account for the inevitable technical improvements and changes to "popular" styles, this seems invaluable as a general writers-block-breaker for web designers. I will say, after browsing 2008 for a minute: Steam is just far and away the most modern. Fascinating to see what ended up influencing the industry (or predicting it?). https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/all-websites/steam-2008 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/all-websites/steam-2008
shombaboor 2y ago
Apart from some ridiculous backgrounds featured here, the web used to be very readable.
dang 2y ago
Related: Web Design Museum - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40579730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40579730 - June 2024 (3 comments) Web Design Museum 1991-2006 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34675360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34675360 - Feb 2023 (31 comments) Web Design Museum 1991 – 2006 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23723141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23723141 - July 2020 (14 comments) Web Design Museum - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17891826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17891826 - Sept 2018 (90 comments)
jl6 2y ago
https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/web-design-history?timeline=2009-present https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/web-design-history?timeline=... Web Design History seems to have trickled to an end in the 2010s. Checks out, IMHO.
lbotos 2y ago
So wild! I was just thinking about 2Advanced today, Was anyone mesmerized by their site in 2006ish: https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/2advanced-studios-v5-attractor-in-2006 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/2advanced-studios-v5...
prmoustache 2y ago
we are missing anti0rp / Netochka Nezvanova's m9ndfukc.org website here. I believe there were others from the same "entity" but can't remember the url.
Astro-Domine 2y ago
What is the essence of the beauty I see in 90s websites? To me, they are easier to reason about. Maybe because of a higher information density, that’s static and aligned such that it’s easier to track groups of components and their relationships; cohesiveness is probably the word. Maybe it’s just nostalgia. But I don’t think so.
jszymborski 2y ago
When I was a kid, I wanted nothing more than make websites and be a web designer. It makes me so happy to see some of the websites that deeply inspired me: - 2Advanced Studios: had an incredible flash banner. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/2advanced-studios-v3-2001 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/2advanced-studios-v3... - Media Temple: This is not the version I remember but (MT) always had the best designed website in hosting https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/media-temple-2002 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/media-temple-2002 - Absolute Cross: Super cool 3D-rendered interface https://web.archive.org/web/20050213040034/http://www.absolutecross.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050213040034/http://www.absolu... - Spoono: King of the super tiny silk pixel font trend of the time imho. Always remembered their multiple colour schemes which I thought was so rad. Tonnes of knowledge on this site too. https://web.archive.org/web/20050209034013/http://www.spoono.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050209034013/http://www.spoono... - GUIStuff: Some of the raddest templates, deeply inspired me https://web.archive.org/web/20050209033810/http://www.guistuff.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050209033810/http://www.guistu... Honourable mention to the GFXVoid Forums where I mostly lurked and https://javascriptfx.com/ https://javascriptfx.com/ for the coolest Javascript snippets of all time.
- tarellel 2y ago
  These were my absolute favorite sites that got me through me teens while I was learning and improving my skills. The development/design community really came together to help everyone grow.

228 points by helloplanets 2y ago

The evolution of the McDonalds website is a great example of playful and whimsical 90s design aesthetic gradually replaced to become the blandness that it is today.

jaredhallen 2y ago
In that particular example, and probably many others, I think the progression corresponded to changes in the business itself. McDonald's rebranded, expanding their target demographic beyond kids specifically, and I feel like they lost all their character in the process.

Aldipower 2y ago

Can't help, those old sites looking very colorful and characterful. Feels personal. Very nice memories.

eterevsky 2y ago

I'm still missing the old Google logo with an elegant serif font.

chris-vecchio 2y ago

I'm grateful to Web Design Museum for keeping the history of web design alive. I love waking up and seeing something new from days gone by that rekindles that spark.

webdesignmuseum 2y ago
Thanks for the support. It helps us make the Museum better.

lagniappe 2y ago

My favorite artist at the time was Mike Young https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/designgraphik-2001 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/designgraphik-2001 Serving 3 is in there, too bad serving phour doesnt seem to be.

web64 2y ago

It's cool to see the website[1] of the startup/dotCom I worked at in the early 2000s captured there! The website won the navigation award at Macromedia's fashforward event, and I still think holds up quite well even over 20 years later. The zoom navigation was quite interesting and worked well on mobile devices like the HP iPAQ PDAs we tested it on. [1] https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/relevare-2002 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/relevare-2002

neya 2y ago

I still to date prefer the older, full-of-character designs than the modern soulless minimalist designs. We also didn't have to worry about annoying cookie consent popups, "subscribe now!" splash screen popups and the general fear of clicking any link that opens a new window randomly to some walled garden.

Bjorkbat 2y ago

Related https://thehistoryofweb.design/ https://thehistoryofweb.design/ The book is an interesting read. The death of Flash feels like the start of a dark age for web design when you compare what came before with what came now. Granted, this may be less due to the death of Flash and more due to marketers and UX professionals trying to simplify the journey from visit to purchase.

Aldipower 2y ago
I was an "ActionScript 3" developer around 2010s targeting browser, but also offline "Rich Internet Applications". Together with our designers, whom worked in Adobe Flash, we had a tremendous throughput of production ready applications. Today I program React.js/TypeScript applications. What a slow turtled pace of getting things done. :( And of course very very expensive to develop. And a lot of things aren't even possible anymore. Of course, the Flash platform had it's downsides too, but in terms of throughput and productivity, this was very very great.
reaperducer 2y ago
The death of Flash feels like the start of a dark age for web design when you compare what came before with what came now. People romanticize Flash these days. Especially people who weren't old enough to struggle with it. Used improperly – as it very often was – Flash was a resource hog far beyond even the craziest of today's web sites. In many circumstances it could actually crash your computer. Not just the browser, but the entire machine. Sure, the operating system and the browser were complicit, but I'm not going to blame a broken window for not being bulletproof. Plus, it seemed like there was forever update after update after update every time you tried to view a fancy web site. Updating plugins isn't a big deal today. It was a big deal when it happened over a 56k dialup connection. Can you imagine someone today thinking, "Oh, this looks like an interesting web site. I'd better close every other window and program on my computer, so it doesn't crash." It's unthinkable. I hate that today's web sites are all boring and desaturated and flat. But I love that I can browse the web and keep a dozen other programs open and doing work at the same time. Watching all of the new things people are doing with canvas and WebGPU and whatnot makes me think we're heading back to the bad old days of Flash. It seems like an arms race between people who want to turn a browser into an operating system, and browser makers trying to keep everything tidy.

raytopia 2y ago

Mid 90s sites have a nice look to them. Honestly in some ways they're easier to read then a lot of websites of today. Is there a reason why designers moved away from that - I'm not sure what to call it - magazine look?

johnisgood 2y ago
Funny how some websites used to have their neat logo on the website, and now it is the name only.
reaperducer 2y ago
Is there a reason why designers moved away from that - I'm not sure what to call it - magazine look? A lot of it is monkey-see-monkey-do. And realted, the widespread use of common frameworks instead of people actually understanding how web sites work and doing their own programming. I build a web site for a hospital that was fast and responsive and accessible. A manager complained that it didn't look like a "real" web site because the pages loaded instantly. She wanted me to put in a mechanism so that every time someone clicked on a link a loading spinner would appear for a few seconds before the next page loaded. Because that's what "real" web sites do.
- cyph3rpvnk 2y ago
  That's atrocious. I think a big part of it is the merging of websites (purely informational) and web applications (programs with IO). The lines have blurred over the years.
- perardi 2y ago
  Wow, I’ve never had someone ask me to purposefully build in latency. That’s nuts. Maybe she was responding to how jarring page transitions can be. I’ve gotten some good use out of the View Transitions API in a product I’m building. (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/view-transitions https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/view-transiti...) It’s a server-side rendered multi-page app, and throwing in just a bit of view transition CSS to get a nice fade effect when you go to a different page does feel nice.

johnisgood 2y ago

Oh my, this is amazing. Nostalgia lane!

chasing 2y ago

https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/exhibitions/y2k-aesthetic-in-web-design https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/exhibitions/y2k-aesthetic-in... Remember when tech was optimistic?

eamonobr 2y ago

I feel like one could turn this into a traveling, interactive, VR/AR type of experience. Enter a room with old sites projected onto the walls. Get hit over the head with fun 90s/00s nostalgia, showcase notable tech from the era, etc.

degenerate 2y ago

YouTube design changed almost every year until 2020! Wild.

tracker1 2y ago

Memberberries.... I member...

bbor 2y ago

Amazing site, thanks so much for sharing! If you know enough to account for the inevitable technical improvements and changes to "popular" styles, this seems invaluable as a general writers-block-breaker for web designers. I will say, after browsing 2008 for a minute: Steam is just far and away the most modern. Fascinating to see what ended up influencing the industry (or predicting it?). https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/all-websites/steam-2008 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/all-websites/steam-2008

shombaboor 2y ago

Apart from some ridiculous backgrounds featured here, the web used to be very readable.

dang 2y ago

Related: Web Design Museum - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40579730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40579730 - June 2024 (3 comments) Web Design Museum 1991-2006 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34675360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34675360 - Feb 2023 (31 comments) Web Design Museum 1991 – 2006 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23723141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23723141 - July 2020 (14 comments) Web Design Museum - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17891826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17891826 - Sept 2018 (90 comments)

jl6 2y ago

https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/web-design-history?timeline=2009-present https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/web-design-history?timeline=... Web Design History seems to have trickled to an end in the 2010s. Checks out, IMHO.

lbotos 2y ago

So wild! I was just thinking about 2Advanced today, Was anyone mesmerized by their site in 2006ish: https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/2advanced-studios-v5-attractor-in-2006 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/2advanced-studios-v5...

prmoustache 2y ago

we are missing anti0rp / Netochka Nezvanova's m9ndfukc.org website here. I believe there were others from the same "entity" but can't remember the url.

Astro-Domine 2y ago

What is the essence of the beauty I see in 90s websites? To me, they are easier to reason about. Maybe because of a higher information density, that’s static and aligned such that it’s easier to track groups of components and their relationships; cohesiveness is probably the word. Maybe it’s just nostalgia. But I don’t think so.

jszymborski 2y ago

When I was a kid, I wanted nothing more than make websites and be a web designer. It makes me so happy to see some of the websites that deeply inspired me: - 2Advanced Studios: had an incredible flash banner. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/2advanced-studios-v3-2001 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/2advanced-studios-v3... - Media Temple: This is not the version I remember but (MT) always had the best designed website in hosting https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/media-temple-2002 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/media-temple-2002 - Absolute Cross: Super cool 3D-rendered interface https://web.archive.org/web/20050213040034/http://www.absolutecross.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050213040034/http://www.absolu... - Spoono: King of the super tiny silk pixel font trend of the time imho. Always remembered their multiple colour schemes which I thought was so rad. Tonnes of knowledge on this site too. https://web.archive.org/web/20050209034013/http://www.spoono.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050209034013/http://www.spoono... - GUIStuff: Some of the raddest templates, deeply inspired me https://web.archive.org/web/20050209033810/http://www.guistuff.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050209033810/http://www.guistu... Honourable mention to the GFXVoid Forums where I mostly lurked and https://javascriptfx.com/ https://javascriptfx.com/ for the coolest Javascript snippets of all time.

tarellel 2y ago
These were my absolute favorite sites that got me through me teens while I was learning and improving my skills. The development/design community really came together to help everyone grow.